Is Sugar Sneaking Into Your "Healthy" Foods?

Processed sugar hides in everything from tomato sauce and salad dressing to crackers and bread. Learn how to kick your sneaky sugar habit

You don't need a nutrition degree to know a piece of cake is packed with sugar. But what you might not realize is that the salad you had for lunch may have contained just as many grams as any obviously sweet treat. These days, with sugar lurking in all kinds of unexpected places, it's hard to avoid the stuff. And considering that some obesity experts say that sugar is as addictive and as harmful to your health as—brace yourself—illicit drugs, it's wise to find out exactly how much you're consuming.

Taking Our Lumps
A recent study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that we're downing more than three times the roughly six-teaspoons-per-day max recommended by the American Heart Association. That's roughly 300-plus extra calories from sugar each day! "Our overconsumption of sugar is an epidemic," says Kristin Kirkpatrick, R.D., of Cleveland Clinic's Wellness Institute.

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Because sugar is in healthy foods like fruit, and vegetables like beets, corn, and potatoes, you're probably getting your daily amount before you even bite into that cupcake. That's not to say you should cut back on produce—it's an essential part of a healthy diet—but you need to be aware of how much sugar you're getting from processed foods, which make up "50 percent of the sugar we eat," says Robert Lustig, M.D., a researcher on childhood obesity at the University of California at San Francisco.

Too bad that's easier said than done. "Sugar hides in places you wouldn't expect because it's cheap to produce, tasty, and addictive," says Kirkpatrick. Flavored yogurt, tomato sauce, ketchup, bread, salad dressing, and crackers all have forms of sugar added during processing. Compounding the problem is that sugar goes by many aliases—sucrose, cane juice, simple syrup, fruit juice, and dozens more—and many of the foods that contain sugar, like bread and salad dressing, don't taste remotely sweet.

Anatomy of a Sugar High
One of the most common (and vilified) forms of sugar is high-fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, a potent, cheap-to-produce sweetener found in soda and other packaged foods. After a highly publicized 2004 study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggested that HFCS was related to the country's widening waistlines, people began shunning it, and some food companies have eliminated it from their products. But the idea that plain sugar is somehow healthier than HFCS is simply whitewashing, says Lustig: "They both have an equally toxic effect on the body."

Sugar is generally made up of both fructose and glucose molecules. Fructose and glucose are metabolized differently by your body; when consumed in excess, fructose triggers your liver to convert it to fat, while glucose triggers a blood-sugar spike and the release of insulin, a fat-storing hormone, to counteract the spike, says Lustig. Eating too much sugar may stimulate your appetite rather than satisfy it, so after eating sugar, your body can actually crave more food.

But that's not even the worst part: In addition to its association with obesity, excess sugar consumption has been linked to serious conditions like insulin resistance, high triglycerides, fatty liver, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.

Clearly, most everyone could stand to cut back. Here, four painless ways to start:

Don't sip sugar: Beverages are a big source of sugar in many diets, and most of the time they don't even fill us up. Researchers speculate that the human body didn't evolve to register liquid calories the same way it does solid foods. When you're trying to drop pounds, nixing sugary drinks can easily help you slash 500 calories a day from your diet.

Think au naturel: "Curb cravings with fruit," advises Katie Cavuto Boyle, R.D., a dietitian and personal chef in Philadelphia. Fruits contain sugar, but their other main ingredient, fiber, slows down the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream, blunting the dangerous high-low cycle.

You'll still want to exercise portion control, though, especially with canned, dried, and tropical fruits like pineapple and mango, which are concentrated sources of sugar and calories.

Sweat for sweets: Yes, working out helps you burn calories, but it may also protect against the harmful effects of sugar, according to researchers at the University of Colorado. Plus, fructose combined with other sugars can improve exercise performance by helping to boost energy.

Sap your cravings: If you're going to have sweeteners, you might as well choose ones that offer extra health perks, such as honey and maple syrup. There's long been buzz about honey's antioxidant and antibacterial properties, and a group of researchers at the University of Rhode Island discovered that real maple syrup contains 54 antioxidants, 20 of which have known health benefits. But teaspoon for teaspoon, both honey and maple syrup have roughly the same number of calories as sugar, so be sure to drizzle them on sparingly. Try some on cottage cheese or yogurt, or mix a bit into tea.

Take baby steps: Scale back slowly and you may find your sugar cravings diminishing. Use a little less sugar in your coffee each week until you can drink it black (or with a little low-fat milk or a pinch of cinnamon). You might be surprised to find that after a few weeks of black coffee, one sip of a mochaccino is simply too sweet. "Your taste buds adjust over time," says Kirkpatrick. And your thighs will follow suit.

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